1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage system in which, for example, a storage device such as a disk array subsystem and a host computer are connected via a communication network and to a setting method for storage configuration information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In database systems handling large-scale data, such as data center, data are managed by using storage subsystems such as disk array devices. Because the disk array devices are configured by arranging a multiplicity of disks in an array-like pattern, they are created based on, for example, RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Inexpensive Disks). In disk array devices, a logical volume which is a logical storage area can be created on a physical disk and the logical volume is provided to host computers such as application servers. The host computers and disk array devices are connected to each other via a device-sharing communication environment such as a SAN (Storage Area Network). Each host computer constituting part of the SAN can read and write the data by accessing the logical volume that has been allocated thereto (or access-authorized) among the logical volumes that the disk array devices have.
A technology is also known in which a management server is provided in the SAN, the management server and each host computer or storage device are connected by a LAN (Local Area Network), and an integrated control is conducted (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-63063).
When data back-up is created, for example, by copying data stored in a certain volume to another volume, a pair of a primary volume and a secondary volume is set and data copying is executed by selecting an appropriate timing. It is, thus, sometimes necessary to change the configuration of a storage system in response to occasional request, but even if a management server has been provided, setting or changing the storage configuration information via a network is a difficult and time-consuming operation. For example, when a storage manager changes the configuration of the storage system, the configuration changes have to be posted by appropriate means such as a telephone or e-mail to the managers of host computers sharing the storage. Furthermore, because the configuration information stored by the host computers also has to be appropriately changed according to configuration changes of the storage system, a manager is required for carrying out respective managing operations for each host computer. Therefore, when storage configuration information is to be set or changed, the storage manager has to communicate with each manager of all the participating host computers and the managers of all the host computers have to carry out the respective operations. As a result, setting and changing the storage configuration information is a difficult and time-consuming operation.